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Dvorak Layout Claimed Not Superior To QWERTY
Michael Pyne sends in an article published at Reason Online 13 years ago, dismantling the entrenched myth that the Dvorak keyboard layout is a superior technology to QWERTY. The odd thing is that this 13-year-old article recaps research (refereed and published in a respected economics journal) 19 years ago. While we have discussed Dvorak many times over the years, I don't believe we have dug into this convincing-sounding refutation of the Dvorak mythology. The article is in the context of arguing against the conventional wisdom of "first mover advantage" — that the first product to market gains a large entrenchment benefit, such as VHS vs. Beta, MS-DOS vs. anything, etc. It's very much a pro-markets piece.
Is that old blowhard at it again? Why do you keep posting stuff about this bozo?
This guy's the limit!
clearly never played EVE-online
Don't panic
If you're serious about typing at high speeds, you know better than to use a sequential keyboard, you go for chorded. A sequential keyboard is one where you type all letters in sequence, such as the common qwerty or dvorak. A chorded keyboard is parallel in the sense that you type whole syllables at the same time; it's kind of like playing the piano. Instead of typing s-y-l-l-a-b-l-e, you'd type syl-la-ble. Do that at speed and you're golden; you can get around three times the speed of ten-fingered qwerty once you're into the system and have it in muscle memory.
The sad truth is of course that that qwerty is here to stay since it has no barrier to entrance: you start with hunt and peck and take off from there. Chorded keyboards take conscious effort to master, but once you're trained on them, they're bliss.
Check out the Veyboard, by a Dutch company, it's one of the nicer chorded systems. (Doesn't lean heavy on abbrevs and cryptospeak like Stenotype.) http://www.veyboard.nl
As someone who types with only one hand [nerve damage to left hand/arm] I'd like to point out that Dvorak exists in three standard layouts: two-handed, left-handed, and right-handed. I've been typing on QWERTY since I was about 10, and typing on Dvorak-RH since I was 18. The difference in speed isn't actually great, but the difference in required range of motion and therefore repetitive strain injury is significant. It's worth it for that alone; QWERTY spreads keys so far apart that typing with one hand is painful after only a few minutes.
..Just wanted to point out that there are other reasons for other keyboard layouts, accessibility for the disabled among them.
That said, it's really only good for English, which isn't an issue to me but would of course be for people who type more often in other languages.
I know that the Slashdot editing has a very low reputation around here but I was pretty interested to see how much work was done on this article writeup. You can see mine at the Firehose entry. The Slashdot editor even went to the trouble of looking up prior Dvorak-related articles (and taking the trouble to notice the article I submitted was 13 years old -- whoops)
I have never understood how merely rearranging the keys on the same fscking keyboard could make a real difference. Yeah, you might get a 6% improvement in typing speed. Who cares?
What would make a difference would be to make sure that you can press Control, Shift, Alt and at the same time press another key without dislocating your fingers. And to have an ergonomic layout of the surrounding keys (cursor movement, backspace, etc.). Our keyboards are in the stone age and the challenge is *not* the arrangement of the character keys, it's the arrangement of everything else. Where in a given layout your p's and q's actually are is a minor thing. Being able to move around your cursor and delete and edit things without leaving your home position can easily *double* your editing speed. That's the reason why people still love vi and Emacs. And this is not a joke.
That, or finally introduce foot pedals. It's a shame that even the most recent keyboards are still bound to torture your hands and your mind just to type capitals, to hit a key combo or to move two words back. Get a decent keyboard that allows to press the control key with the edge of your hand instead of with your pinky and use Emacs and you'll be in editing heaven. Pathetic...
What about bouncing between Dvorak and QWERTY? I assume that you've had to type on a keyboard other than your own on more than one occasion. I tried to use Dvorak for a short while but gave up because of that more than anything else.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
hehe.. actually, it was sarcasm. Hovering your hands over the keyboard and moving them as little as possible is exactly how you get CTS. This is why kids don't get taught the "home row" method of typing anymore. Correct posture is to rest your wrist in front of the keyboard and reach for the keys. This is called, among over things, the "reach method". The purpose is to encourage as much movement as possible. Exercise, it's not just for your legs.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What about bouncing between Dvorak and QWERTY? I assume that you've had to type on a keyboard other than your own on more than one occasion.
Well, at first, I figured out just how easy it is to switch keymaps on most modern OSes. Unfortunately, when I forgot to change it back, I left a wake of "My keyboard is broken!" computers in my wake.
I've actually gotten to the point where I can use both, and QWERTY is reasonably fast, though still not as comfortable. It takes a bit to get used to, and my error rate goes way up, but the difference is basically kicking me back to 30-40 WPM -- I'm typing this sentence in QWERTY to prove that point.
But, since I have a laptop, I can pretty much type the way I want most of the time. It also is yet another customization of said laptop that discourages others from using it without supervision.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This was what killed it for me. I switched for myself for a few months, but I spent a lot of time typing on other peoples' computers and then I ended up having to switch back to QWERTY. Dvorak is a nicer layout in terms of comfort, but switching between the two was just irritating.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I know that the Slashdot editing has a very low reputation around here but I was pretty interested to see how much work was done on this article writeup. You can see mine at the Firehose entry. The Slashdot editor even went to the trouble of looking up prior Dvorak-related articles (and taking the trouble to notice the article I submitted was 13 years old -- whoops)
Wow, you're right. I'll fire off an email to Taco letting him know that kdawson's account has been hacked. That sort of compromise can't be tolerated, even if it's by a benevolent professional editor.
I always read about how our QWERTY typewriters were designed to deliberately 'slow' you down. I even taught this to my classes of elementary and middle school students.
In my classes I tried to teach my young students (5th grade) to use the computer to enhance their regular school work. One day they came to class and told me that their homework was to find a sentence and count, how many a's, how many b's, etc. I delighted in teaching them to use a spreadsheet for this.
The next day my son came home from school and showed me the class totals. I was struck by an idea. I pulled out my Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing manual (in the days when they came with paper manuals) to compare the results of these 5th graders with the Dvorak keyboard. I was stunned, as they matched almost perfectly.
If young children without a bias come up with the same result, there is a rightness and a logic to it. Soon thereafter my son switched to Dvorak and after about a week was faster. He was even much faster another week later.
Soon thereafter, I used Mavis Beacon to learn the Dvorak keyboard while on a flight to Tokyo. I was typing fully in Dvorak by the end of that flight and never went back. Only rarely am I forced to type in QWERTY and on those occasions I have to look at the keys. I try to keep it out of my consciousness so as not to conflict with my use of Dvorak, and I have forgotten how to type fast in QWERTY.
The main benefit is that it feels so much better, as my fingers travel less. There is a lot less stress on my fingers. My fingers were starting to exhibit signs of pain and exhaustion when typing in QWERTY and that went away. Dvorak is much easier on the fingers.
OK a new size TV
For an example of a keyboard for a non-Latin alphabet, look at the alternate symbols on this Japanese keyboard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MacBookProJISKeyboard-1.jpg
Obviously, that's not a real Japanese keyboard, because it's missing they keys for ^_^, o_O, and =3.
I quite literally scraped off all the key labels from all my keyboards both at home and at work. It doesn't just discourage the keyboard illiterate, it actually leaves them questioning your sanity, so they tend to stay well away.
Thats a myth, QWERTY was not there to slow the typist down, but to speed them up. Letters that would jam where places further apart, so less jamming and more speed as the result. As a result QWERTY is simply the solution to a problem that no longer exist.